Transition-density-fragment interaction approach for exciton-coupled circular dichroism spectra

A transition-density-fragment interaction (TDFI) method for exciton-coupled circular dichroism (ECCD) spectra is proposed. The TDFI method was previously developed for excitation-energy transfer, which led to the successful estimation of the electronic coupling energy between donor and accepter molecules in xanthorhodopsin [K. J. Fujimoto and S. Hayashi, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131, 14152 (2009)]. In the present study, the TDFI scheme is extended to the ECCD spectral calculation based on the matrix method and is applied to a dimerized retinal (all-trans N-retinylidene-L-alanine Schiff base) chromophore. Compared with the dipole-dipole and transition charge from ESP methods, TDFI has a much improved description of the electronic coupling. In addition, the matrix method combined with TDFI can reduce the computational costs compared with the full quantum-mechanical calculation. These advantages of the present method make it possible to accurately evaluate the CD Cotton effects observed in experiment.